Saturday, October 27, 2007

Atlanta Deja Vu

Yesterday was the regularly scheduled meeting of the Silk Painters of Atlanta (SPA), and I have been unable to attend for the past few months, so I was bound and determined to be there this time! Quite often the meetings coincide with our weekend visits to the condo, but due to scheduling conflicts, this one did not. Our church dinner group was meeting "at home" last night, so I made a round trip visit to Atlanta for the meeting, then we went to dinner with our church friends last evening, and this morning we got up bright and early and headed back down to the city. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! How can it be that this country mouse adores the city so very much?

As always the SPA meeting was loads of fun and very informative! This group of ladies truly feeds my soul and I am so thankful for the privilege of meeting with them. I am going to post pictures on our SPA blog, but I will post just a few here too:

This is Martha telling about her technique of applying the painted silk to her stretched canvases. Aren't her figures just incredible!!

Above is Gail's wonderful piece. Gail has been trained in Japanese Brush painting and she has adapted that technique (which she teaches regularly in the Atlanta area) to silk. What a knockout piece she has done. You may find her work offered for sale all over the city, and most recently at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

The above piece is one done by Inez. Her incredible work really speaks to my soul! She brought along many pieces to share, and she uses so many different techniques. I was in awe.

This last wonderful piece was done by Sue. In a past life, she was a watercolorist...well, she still paints watercolors, but now she also works in silk. Isn't this piece magnificent?!!

When we got to Midtown this morning, we headed for Piedmont Park in hopes of buying our last pastry of the Green Market season from our friend Brooke at Breadgarden...but she wasn't there! We "settled" for an incredibly yummy hummingbird muffin from the Sweet Auburn Bakery, and then headed down the street for coffee and people watching at Caribou. Afterwards we hit the neighborhood yard sales. Here's my only find for the day:

This afternoon we enjoyed a lunch of mussels, French bread, and a saladeNicoise on the patio at Apres Diem, and then saw Sean Penn's heart wrenching "Into the Wild" at Midtown Arts cinema. I don't recall reading John Krakauer's book upon which the movie is based but I know we read the excerpts in "Outside" magazine. Even though I knew the outcome, I still wasn't prepared for the movie's end. The photography is beautiful, but I fervently hope that Christopher McCandless found peace, love and understanding before his life ended....and I think he did.

I have one minor rant before I close. I was mailing several small packages at our local post office yesterday afternoon, and decided to use my credit card for payment. Well, I do not sign my credit cards, mainly because I like store clerks to be on their toes and ask for further identification when accepting my credit card payment. The postal clerk informed me that she could not accept my credit card unless I signed it! "That's the law", she told me! right!!! I explained my reason for not signing the card and she said it didn't matter. I showed her my id, and she handed me a pen saying, "sign your card, or give me cash, or don't mail your packages". I am wondering if the Postmaster General has worried his little head over this bureaucratic detail or if this clerk just decided to be ornery at 5:00 PM on a Friday afternoon. I mean really!!! Let me know if you sign your credit cards and why. I'm just curious.

2 comments:

Here in Sweden we also have to sign our credit cards but I don’t know why, because most of the places were you pay with credit cards have a little terminal were you draw your card your self and then you dash your code that you got with the card. This way is the fastest and you don’t have to show the card when you pay, but in some stores/shops they are a bit old-fashioned and you have to both sign the bill and show an id and that’s, I think, when the card has to be signed so the card and id has the same name and owner.They are changing more and more to a new kind of terminals, and cards, were you just have to put the card in a small opening and you don’t have to do anything more until the terminal has read a little data chip on the credit card.The data chip on the cards came many years ago, but not the terminals (?). This data chip will make the cards much safer for forgery.All this you probably already knew.

Yo, Judy, I gotta go with the postal clerk on this one, too. I'm looking at the back of my Citibank credit card and below the white strip it says "authorized signature," and below that it says "not valid unless signed." I agree with Eva that when you show your ID, some backward places (like the U.S. Postal Service) still check the signature on your ID with the signature on the back of the card. Once in Laredo, TX, J almost "went postal" in a record store where in addition to his credit card, they asked for an ID. No other store in the mall had ever asked him for an ID, so he was incensed. I told him to look around at the customers (they were all teenagers) and try to see why the store would want to check ID's that matched (maybe stolen?)credit cards, sort of the reverse of your situation. xxoo Carol